What is data skew and how do you address account ownership skew, account data skew, and Chatter skew?

Data skew occurs when a single record is the parent of an unusually large number of child records, causing performance and locking issues.

Account Ownership Skew (>10K records owned by one user): Occurs when a single user owns tens of thousands of Account records. When sharing recalculation runs for that user (e.g., role change), the system must process all their records — causing timeouts. Fix: Distribute ownership using a queue or multiple users as owners. Use Groups/Queues as owners for high-volume accounts.

Account Data Skew: A single Account has an extremely large number of related records (e.g., 50,000 Contacts). DML on the Account can cause record lock contention as child records lock the parent. Fix: Archive old records, use external objects for historical data, or restructure the data model.

Chatter Skew: A Chatter group or user has extremely high follow counts or feed items, degrading Chatter feed performance. Fix: Clean up old follows, archive inactive groups, limit automated Chatter posts.